A seminal modern noir work from the 1970s about an innocent
and lost
soul making his way among liars and thieves, in this hauntingly
reflective
piece on America in the post-Watergate period. This moody tale done in
a bland Technicolor is about an ex-pro football star and now a
small-time
private investigator named Harry Moseby (Hackman). He is obsessed with
always trying to solve things, whether in business or in his private
life.
Harry is shattered to learn that his wife Ellen is cheating when he
spots
her outside a movie theater with her lover. Harry has just been hired
by
an aging, big chested, former actress and sexually liberated divorcee,
Arlene Iverson, to find her runaway teenage daughter, Delly Grastner
(Melanie's
screen debut). Arlene is not interested in her daughter, but needs her
living with her because that's the way it's stipulated in her
daughter's
trust fund.

Harry had searched his entire life to find his father. At
last when
he found him living in a rooming house in Baltimore, all he could do is
follow him into the park and watch from a distance as he read the
funnies,
never even attempting to meet him.

Harry uses his job to get away from his home problems. He
begins
to track down Delly through her freaky friend Quentin. He's an ace
mechanic
but a troubled individual who was one of Delly's many lovers, until he
was jilted. He steers Harry to a film location in New Mexico where she
was involved with a self-absorbed stunt pilot, a stud named Marv
Ellman.
From Joe Ziegler, an older stuntman on the set, Harry figures out that
Delly probably went to the Florida Keys to live with her stepfather Tom
Iverson, who is running an airplane charter service there.

At Tom's place, Harry becomes attracted to his mistress,
Paula (Warren),
a sad-eyed, despondent but attractive woman, who seems to be just as
much
a burnout as is Harry. Through her, he finds the nymphomaniac Delly
living
in one of Tom's fishing cabins and talks the reluctant girl into going
back with him. But Delly, while diving, finds a crashed plane in the
water
and identifies the body as Ellman's, without telling who it is to
Harry.
Without realizing it, Harry has stepped into a murder cover-up.

Warning: spoiler to follow. Skip to
last paragraph
if you don't want to know the details of Harry's investigation.

Soon after Delly is returned to her L.A. home she dies on a
film
location while doing a car stunt, one in which Joe Ziegler also gets
badly
injured. Harry has already been paid and the case is over for him, but
he can't let it go. He empathizes with Delly, feeling they are both
loners
who can't fit into normal society and he wants to know why she was
killed.
He suspects murder and that Quentin, who is the mechanic on the movie
set,
rigged the car. Harry ignores his own family situation and goes on his
own to see Tom again. He soon discovers there is a smuggling racket of
pre-Colombian art taking place that involves Tom and Paula, which they
kept secret from him. When Tom gets killed after a vicious assault on
Harry,
there is a terrific surprise awaiting Harry when he finds out who the
third
smuggler is. All the smugglers are killed in a horrible fashion, but
Harry
is left stuck in the ocean as his boat keeps going around in circles in
the same spot where he fought off the smuggler in an airplane who was
attacking
him.

This is arguably the best film that Arthur Penn has ever
done. The
acting is thoughtfully and purposefully carried out. The character
study
of the Gene Hackman character shows someone who has lost control of his
life and all the knowledge he gains because of his curiosity and
persistence,
still leaves him feeling like a lost soul. Hackman's characterization
is
superb. This excellently scripted film by Alan Sharp, who captures the
mood of the country at the time when many dissidents survived Vietnam,
the JFK assassination and the White House scandal; but, who still felt
weary and uncertain about the future. It seems as if no matter what
some
people do or how smart they become (like Harry), they are still going
around
in circles. It is sort of like playing the Grand Master in chess and
you
know what move to trap him, but you still screw up somehow and lose.